Quotes from Ron Chernow

Betty had a Jewish mother's implicit faith that expensive lessons and tightly scheduled days of activity will produce healthy, wealthy, nonneurotic offspring.

a way of building tension and softening up the parties.

Both Hill and Harriman were given seats on the board.

I was almost overwhelmed.

Bill had relatively little contact with his rich sons, John and William, but was extremely close to the envious Frank, who shared his love of fishing and hunting.

As time passed, the strains between Gates and Harper grew intolerable.

he suffered under the misapprehension that Rockefeller had conspired with Standard Oil colleagues in the Mesabi venture.

Unable to curtail his free-handed spending and with his crops faring poorly, he started out 1786 with a paltry eighty-six pounds in cash.

United Colonies of America.

That this abominable childhood produced such a strong, productive, self-reliant human-being - that this fatherless adolescent could have ended up a founding father of a country he had not yet even seen - seems little short of miraculous.

by saying little, he underscored his position as honest broker and permitted the antagonists to vent their anger.

his great confidence and trust in me bridged all the difference in age, wealth, and position.

No business experience was ever wasted upon Rockefeller.

Carnegie had seriously misjudged developments in the ore business.

he occupied a series of positions—

Had their opinions clashed, John might have been exposed to critical perspectives that could have saved him from his business excesses.

I would do what I thought best.

Via com bastante clareza que mais liberdade podia conduzir a uma maior desordem e, por uma dialética perigosa, de volta à perda da liberdade.

Pierpont was, by nature, a laconic man.

Her husband was not so brave as she.

Eliza never lost her temper, never raised her voice, never scolded anyone—a style of understated authority that John inherited.

He worried that a certain unnamed party might impose despotism: "To watch the progress of such endeavours is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against the encroachments of power. This then is a right of the utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood."26

Rockefeller never had a single motive for any action and was surely motivated by more than altruism in championing cheap kerosene.

Hamilton induced Philip Schuyler to renege on his pledged support for Duane in favor of King.